Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/515

Rh predecessors—Newton. Dalton encountered certain phenomena, such as multiple and definite proportion, aqueous vapor as a distinct constituent of air, and, seeking for the simplest common representation, found it in Newton's well-known doctrine. For example, he says:

And he quotes from Newton:

This was the secret of the opposition of Hope and, later, of Faraday's complaint. In a letter, dated January 2, 1811, Hope wrote to Dalton as follows:

While Faraday, similarly suspicious, as late as 1844, said:

The truth is that Dalton was a first-rate theorist, who arrived at his conclusions, not primarily on the basis of induction from experiment, but by reflection. Analogically, he imports the view of "matter n peculiar to celestial mechanics, through molecular physics, into the realm of chemistry. Proceeding thus deductively, he evinces little awareness of the very complex problems involved, which the later developments of the atomic theory were to reveal. Cut off from the world, he did not possess intimate acquaintance in detail with the labors of his immediate predecessors and contemporaries—a happy accident, no doubt. For, this freedom from puzzle and disturbance enabled him to proceed boldly with a generalization when men of the caliber of Wollaston and Davy hung back. Dalton had natural capacity for logical thought, and complete confidence in the validity of those mathematical syntheses of physical facts which he had pondered.

But, as happens frequently, his limitations are traceable to the same source. Like Kant before him, Dalton became so entangled in the theoretical ways of his own thought that, after he had promulgated his